The Long Game (TV story)
The Long Game 'is the seventh episode the first series of ''Doctor Who. It was written by Russell T. Davies, directed by Brian Grant and featured Christopher Eccleston as the Ninth Doctor and Billie Piper as Rose Tyler. Overview To be added Synopsis In the far future, Satellite 5 broadcasts to the entire Earth Empire. Nothing escapes the eye of the sinister Editor and the Doctor suspects that mankind is being manipulated. But just who is the Editor working for? And does Adam have what it takes to become the Time Lord's companion? Plot While various monitors in a very large room broadcast various programs and newsfeeds, the TARDIS materialises in the corner of the room. The Doctor and Rose step out preemptively so the Doctor can tell Rose when and where they've landed so she can relay it to Adam when he, to a reaction of total shock and awe, steps out. With nobody around, the Doctor leads them to an observation deck looking out over the planet Earth , in the year 200,000 during the Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire . Adam then faints and the Doctor teases Rose about his being her boyfriend; she wryly responds "not anymore". After he wakes up, the Doctor heartily talks up the period of Earth's history for their culture, including good food and manners, when the room is suddenly swarming with people displaying nothing of what he'd just described, confusing him. After getting Rose and Adam some local currency for food, the Doctor wanders off to get some answers. He approaches two women named Suki and Cathica who inform him he's on Floor 139 of Satellite 5, where all the news across the empire is fed through and broadcast to the human race. Cathica also expresses a desire to make it to Floor 500 where the walls are allegedly made of gold. However, up on Floor 500, a sinister, white-haired man known as the Editor watches the conversation via security cameras, suspects something is amiss and orders security checks. Elsewhere, Adam starts to voice a kind of homesickness so Rose gives him her superphone to make a call to his parents' house in the past. All of a sudden an alarm goes off and everybody scarpers, while Adam and Rose return to the Doctor; the security checks from Floor 500 continue. Cathica leads the Doctor and his companions to a strange chamber where the journalists gather all of the empire's information. Using the system, the six operators around the center chair connect with chips in their brains and every fact across the empire is compressed and streamed into Cathica through a port she opens in the forehead by snapping her fingers. The travellers watch the operation in fascination. Upstairs, the security checks are completed and the Editor waits to find the outlier; Adam and Rose are incredibly impressed by the gathering process but the Doctor states that the technology is wrong and suspects foul play. A glitch in Suki's connection reveals her to be the security aberration to the Editor and he intercepts her, breaking the fact collection. When the Editor's client is upset with his slow progress, he orders Suki brought up to Floor 500. Later, while Suki prepares to depart, Adam tells Rose that watching the process has given him a strong bout of culture shock and that he's going to the observation deck. Before he leaves, Rose gives him the TARDIS key and he walks off, appearing incredibly pleased with himself. Suki then says her goodbyes and rushes into the lift to Floor 500; Cathica reveals to the Doctor afterward that all that go to Floor 500 never return. Arriving upstairs, Suki finds the entire floor abandoned and frost-smothered. Looking around, Suki stumbles across the decayed skeletons of a ring of operators. Frightened she moves away and is drawn to a suddenly lit room, where the encountered the Editor and his operators. He pulls up her employment application tape, dismissing all of her claims as lies, before pulling up footage of her real identity as Eva Saint Julienne, a member of the Freedom Fifteen and a self-proclaimed anarchist. She then draws a gun on him and demands to know the truth about Satellite Five. The Editor then draws her attention to his employer, an unseen entity on the ceiling with descends on her. By the observation deck, Adam tries to use the computer terminal to learn what he can about computers. Elsewhere, the Doctor and Rose follow Cathica and, after she figures out that they aren't management, the Doctor insists that the society she knows is wrong, the technology used to gather all the information should've been redundant years ago and that the entirety of the empire has regressed by about 90 years, almost as many as Satellite 5 had been broadcasting. Meanwhile, Adam uses Rose's superphone to call his parents voicemail and he starts reading off the information he gets from the terminal when it locks him out, insisting he go to Floor 16. Heading downstairs, Adam learns that Floor 16 covers the chipping and expresses interest; despite his reservations, Adam uses the unlimited credit bar the Doctor gave him to pay for the surgery. Upstairs, the Doctor and Rose hack into the station's mainframe with his sonic screwdriver; the Editor watches them from upstairs and orders excessive security scans on them. The scans come back giving no identification for either of them and he orders them brought up. While Cathica complains about getting in trouble, the Doctor and Rose ponder about why it's so hot on the platform. Hacking into the computer core, they find all the heat in the station being pushed downwards when the access code for Floor 500 appears on the screen; with access upstairs granted to them, the Doctor and Rose go upstairs. On Floor 16, Adam's surgery is completed giving him a chip port and nanomachines which freeze his waste when he throws up. Arriving upstairs, the Doctor and Rose meet the Editor, who is thoroughly fascinated by the pair of them. Rose spots Suki, dead and frozen but still working on account of the chip in the brain. When they try to leave, the Editor has them restrained; he tells the Doctor that there is no Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire, merely a empire wherein humans reside at the behest of his client, whom he promptly introduces by pointing them to a large, slimy, amorphous entity on the ceiling called the Jagrafess (or as the Editor calls him, 'Max'). Elsewhere, Adam returns to Floor 139 and sneaks past Cathica to the gathering room, while she uses the hacked mainframe and follows the Doctor and Rose to Floor 500. Placing them in manacles, the Editor continues to interrogate the travellers while priding himself on his ability to crush any doubts about the system that keeps humanity unwittingly enslaved. The Doctor deduces that the Jagrafess is responsible for generating all the heat on the station, which is then vented downstairs to keep it cool and alive. While this is going on, Adam calls his parents again and activates his infospike, while the phone records it. The Editor senses the infospike and starts reading Adam's mind, learning everything he wishes to know about the Doctor, Rose and the TARDIS and taking the key from Adam's pocket. Unaware that Cathica had been watching the entire exchange and heard everything, Cathica triggers her own infospike on Floor 500, cutting Adam's connection and uses everything she'd learned about the heating and the secret human oppression to reverse it, venting the heat back upstairs. Floor 139 goes into high alert while Rose frees the Doctor and they flee as the Jagrafess starts to explode from the reverse heat intake. The Editor tries to leave too, but Eva, still slightly aware, trips him and holds him in place as the Jagrafess explodes, killing them both. The Doctor also shuts off Cathica's infospike. Returning downstairs, the Doctor leaves Cathica to explain everything that had transpired and assures her that the human race's development should return to normal now. However, furious at Adam's actions, he shoves him inside the TARDIS and travels back to his home. After destroying the answering machine containing Satellite 5's archive, which would have done serious damage to the course of history, the Doctor tells Adam that he's no longer welcome on the TARDIS for doing what he did for his own selfish reasons and, despite his protests, tells him that he'll have to live a quiet life with the chip in his head, lest he gather unwanted attention, before vanishing into the TARDIS with Rose in tow. As it dematerialises, Adam's mother returns, elated to see him; however, her joy turns to horror as she haphazardly snaps her fingers and activates his chip. Cast * Doctor Who - Christopher Eccleston * Rose Tyler - Billie Piper * Adam - Bruno Langley * Head Chef - Colin Prockter * Cathica - Christine Adams * Suki - Anna Maxwell-Martin * The Editor - Simon Pegg * Nurse - Tamsin Greig * Adam's Mum - Judy Holt Crew To be added References To be added Story Notes To be added Continuity To be added Home video and audio releases To be added External Links * Official ''The Long Game'' page on '''Doctor Who Website